Alison Luterman – Canoe

Anātman is the Sanskrit word Buddhists use for one of the “three marks of existence” (the three central qualities of every human life). Translated as “no-self,” the teaching connects directly to one of the other three marks of existence, anitya, or “impermanence.” Anātman declares that over the course of our lifetimes, there is no permanent, solid “self” we carry with us throughout our ever-changing existences.

In her poem, Canoe, Alison Luterman reminds us though, that while we will continue to change radically (our bodies, circumstances, identities, perspectives, and own being), there will also be peak experiences we carry and treasure always. These are those luminous memories that serve as touchstones. They reconnect us to some truth or feeling that reorients us again and again to what matters most—however ultimately impermanent we may be.

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Canoe

When I was young, years ago, canoeing on the green
Green River, with my young first husband,

I wriggled out of my shorts, eased over the lip
of our little boat, and became eel-woman,

naked and glistening, borne along in the current.
He paddled, I floated and spun,

and let the ripples take me.
Even an hour of that kind of freedom

can last for years and years,
can become a touchstone you return to

long after the rented canoe has been returned,
and the road trip has ended, and then the marriage,

and then the husband’s brief life, and you yourself
have become someone else entirely; still

you return in your mind to the days
you could set up a tent in the dark,

and build a small fire
from birch bark and newspaper

and sit beside it, sipping tea, savoring your muscles’ sweet ache,
as one by one the uncountable stars came out.

 

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